I am glad God saw DeathAnd gave Death a job taking care of all who are
tired of living:

When
all the wheels in a clock are worn and slow and
the connections looseAnd the clock goes on ticking and telling the wrong
time from hour to hourAnd
people around the house joke about what a bum
clock it is,How glad the clock is when the big Junk Man drives
his wagonUp to the house and puts his arms around the clock and
says:
"You don't belong here,
You gotta come
Along with me,"How glad the clock is then, when it feels the arms of the
Junk Man close around it and carry it away.

[ 3 pages, circa 3' 00" ]

Carl Sandburg

"The Junk Man", from Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) , was
published in 1916. It is an interesting metaphor which presages other such
twentieth century poems about death, like E. E. Cummings' "dying is fine)but
Death," 6 in XAIPE, from 1950. Yet Death as a character in a story
line can be seen in the religious morality plays of the Medieval and
Renaissance eras, and through to recent stories like Terry Pratchett's
various fictions (Hogfather as one example) and Hollywood films (Death
Takes a Holiday). Sandburg's Death is the junk man and life as the other
character in this text is the clock, a metaphor for time "winding down." In
so many cases the modern perspective is quite "religious" while not
referring to religious tenets, and posits a view to the end of life as
"glad," in Sandburg's text.

The tonic of C minor is introduced through the harmonic submediant minor
with its raised sixth, which acts also as the raised sixth in the four note
tonic minor. For this, the melodic line is pressed into this scheme. The
text seems through composed, so to speak, while the setting breaks it into
seeming strophes, two appearing before a bridge and the reprise afterwards.

The bridge moves the the mediant in its major-minor seven chord form for a
short statement as "Death," the "Junk Man" in capital letters, speaks
gently, and more slowly than the surrounding tempi of this setting. The
parallel slip chords lead to D flat as the fulcrum back to the opening of
the setting itself, B double flat as A natural in the next measure.

The score for The Junk Man is available as a free PDF download,
though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is
prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic
below for this piano-vocal score.